Marty Ambrose - Mango Bay 04 - Killer Kool

by Marty Ambrose

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Marco,” a younger man’s pleading voice wafted out. “I won’t do it again.”

  “You’re damn right you won’t-you’re fired!”

  “I’ll have to go back to Italy if I lose my job,” the other man said, his voice rising in volume. “You can’t do that to me and Beatrice.”

  “Yes, I can! You don’t have Carlos here anymore to coddle you.”

  “Put the knife down, Papa,” a female voice pleaded.

  Knife?

  My eyes met Madame Geri’s in alarm.

  The kitchen door burst open, and a slim, dark haired, young Italian stallion dashed out, Marco in his wake; the latter held up a large butcher knife in his hand.

  The diners ceased conversation for a third time to watch the show.

  “Stay away from my Beatrice!” Marco pointed the knife at him, his breath coming in short gasps. “You’re not good enough for her-I’ve told you that again and again. Now, get out, and don’t come back.”

  The young man held his ground, but I could see his hands trembling as he faced down the knife. I’d be running for my life, though I hadn’t exactly done that when a murderer threatened me with a paint knife (but that’s another story).

  “I’d better separate them,” Jimmy said, starting in that direction, but Madame Geri grabbed his arm.

  “No! Call the police.” She pulled out her cell phone and handed it to him.

  Before he could punch in the number, Marco continued with his tirade: “Get out, you loser! I’m not saying it again.” He advanced toward the younger man, raising the knife over his head.

  “Stop it, right now!” I screamed, as I pushed back my chair and stood up. Where did that come from?

  Both men turned and looked at me.

  “You’re … uh, ruining everyone’s lunch.” That was lame, but it was the best I could come up with. My knees shook as if I had palsy.

  “Leave Guido alone!” another diner yelled. “He’s a good kid.”

  A chorus of agreement echoed around the dining room.

  Marco lowered the knife and put a hand to his head, swaying back and forth. “I … I don’t feel well.”

  The knife dropped to the floor with a thud; then he began to wheeze and cough but managed to stay on his feet. “I can’t b-breathe.”

  With his face turning red and blotchy, he clawed at his throat.

  “Call 911!” I yelled, sprinting across the room just in time to see Marco topple over and Guido catch him. They both sank to the floor.

  Marco gulped for air, his whole body shuddering.

  By the time I got to his side, he wasn’t moving.

  “Quick, try CPR!” I exclaimed.

  Guido quickly complied. After several minutes of breathing into Marco’s mouth and pumping his chest, the young man leaned back, tears in his eyes. “I don’t think it will help.”

  No, it wouldn’t.

  Marco was dead.

  Silence descended on the diners like a heavy blanket of darkness at the sudden appearance of death’s shadow. No one moved; no one spoke.

  I cleared my throat, and as if on cue, everyone began shouting and yelling on cell phones in unison.

  In the midst of the total chaos, I sank to my knees next to Guido, not sure what to do. “Where are those damn paramedics?” I grabbed Marco’s hand, frantically trying to get a pulse.

  It felt cold, without a detectable heartbeat. Then I felt the side of his neck. Nothing. A mute cry of sadness rose up in my throat.

  Tears slid down Guido’s face. “I tried, I tried,” he kept repeating as he rocked back and forth on the floor next to me.

  “What’s going on?” A young woman appeared in the kitchen doorway, her delicate, cameolike face knit with concern and confusion.

  “Beatrice!” someone exclaimed. “Stay in the kitchen.”

  But when she spied Guido and me on the floor, she raced over and then halted, her mouth dropping open in shock. “Papa!”

  She threw herself on top of Marco, shaking him by the shoulders. “What’s wrong with him? Why isn’t he moving?”

  After a few moments, she burst into sobs and buried her face in her father’s chest-her long brown hair spilling over both of them like a shield.

  Just then, I heard sirens-and the paramedics appeared seconds later.

  “Stand back, please,” one man said in a deep, firm voice, as he gently eased Beatrice away from her father. I quickly moved out of the way.

  They tried everything to bring life back into MarcoCPR, injections, heart paddles-but nothing worked. He just lay there, totally unresponsive.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there’s nothing we can do,” the paramedic said to Beatrice, who then crumpled into Guido’s arms. “He probably had anaphylaxis-an extreme allergic reaction to something.”

  “Papa!” she exclaimed, clinging to Guido. They cried together, and I found my own eyes welling up. How could Marco have expired in front of us so quickly from an allergy? Was it possible?

  I sensed Madame Geri at my elbow, and I sort of sagged into her briefly. For some reason, right now I found her familiar patchouli perfume presence comforting.

  The paramedics wheeled Marco out, and Beatrice fol lowed with Guido practically carrying her, tears still streaming down her cheeks. After they left, everyone turned deadly quiet yet again. People just milled aroundnot sure whether they should leave.

  After a few minutes, Jimmy motioned the customers toward the front door, “We’d better close the restaurant, everyone-and please don’t worry about paying your bill. Our apologies.”

  All of the diners filed out of the restaurant with a somber silence, leaving Madame Geri, Jimmy, and me. The kitchen staff hovered near the back door, and Jimmy nodded in their direction. They left too.

  “Well … that was unbelievable-and sad,” I commented to no one in particular. “Poor Marco.”

  Jimmy shook his head. “Terrible.”

  “I probably shouldn’t be asking this question, but what about Carlos’ death?” I continued.

  “Who can say for sure?” Madame Geri interjected in a soft voice. “I wish I could say or do more, but that’s life and death-as I learned when Jimmy’s father died. Believe me, if I could have stopped that, I would have, but the events were bigger than my powers-it’s destiny.”

  My eyes widened. I’d never heard Madame Geri talk like that. “I … I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do” Her chin tilted higher, and a flutter of sorrow winged across her face, tugging at my already jumbled emotions. All of a sudden, we both started to weep.

  “All right, time to go,” Jimmy said, ushering us out of there while we blubbered, and he locked the restaurant behind us.

  An hour later, I parked Rusty in front of my Airstream and sat there, savoring the comforting sight of my 4,220-pound RV with its gleaming silver exterior and blue-and-white striped awning.

  Ah. Nirvana.

  It never failed to restore me-even in the wake of trauma.

  I pushed the day’s events out of my mind as I beheld my little spot at the Twin Palms RV Resort, which edged on Coral Island’s only beach, or what passes for a beach around here: a tiny strip of sand that almost disappears when the tide comes in. But I loved it-the salty air, sea breeze, and rolling waves. Unfortunately, the island stretches north-south and is enclosed by the more popular, touristy barrier islands with their wide beaches, so this bit of sandy shore was about it.

  I looked over to the van positioned on the left of my Airstream-that’s where Cole was housed. He’d driven the vehicle all over the West “trying to find himself,” and the van looked like it had seen some hard road. My degree in Automotive Psychology from Car and Driver magazine told me his van-home reflected his lifestyle: free and simple. I liked that-kind of.

  Then I checked out the site to my right. For a moment, I thought I saw the outlines of another Airstream. Smaller, shabbier, but with the same silver, hutlike appearance. Then I blinked, and it was gone. The site was emp
ty.

  Must’ve been glare from the sun.

  “Cole?”

  No answer. He was probably on a shoot-his freelance photography job provided enough money for his site at the RV resort, food, and an endless supply of boogie boards to skim the surf.

  I sighed. At one time, I would have found that combination fun and attractive. But, now, after all my experiences on the island-including murder and mayhem-I might have become (gasp) more serious about life. Possibly. But every time I was with Cole, I thought about Nick, and every time I was with Nick, I thought about Cole. I had officially become indecisive and two-faced.

  A tiny scratching sound caught my attention. Kong. I made for my Airstream door and swung it open to behold my teacup poodle standing there, his tail flipping back and forth in excitement to see me.

  “Hi, sweet pea.” He licked my ankle.

  Now, what man could compete with that?

  I grabbed his leash, hooked it onto his collar, and we made for the surf. He trotted alongside me, sniffing the briny air and perking up his ears at the sound of the seabirds diving for fish. As we reached the shoreline, though, he put the brakes on. Kong hated water-especially salt water. He loved the beach, but he didn’t like getting wet.

  “Come on, Kong, cut me some slack.” I yanked at his leash. “I’ve had a really rotten day, I’ve got two dinner dates tonight, and I’ll probably need to stay up until all hours writing the restaurant reviews when I get home.”

  He barked in response but didn’t move. I gave the leash another tug, but for a minuscule little pup, he could be amazingly strong. Ever since I had taken him to a doggy psychologist to help him get over his inferiority complex regarding his diminutive size and named him King Kong-Kong for short (no pun intended)-he took great pride in asserting himself at the most inopportune moments.

  Karma. You fix one thing, and it causes something else.

  “All right. Get it in gear.” I yanked on the leash and strode over to a clump of palmetto palms. After staring at me for a few moments in defiance, he finally started to lift his leg-

  “Mallie!” a female voice yelled out.

  Distracted, Kong immediately dropped his leg, and I groaned in frustration.

  “Did I interrupt him?” Wanda Sue, my landlady, asked as she strolled toward me.

  “No, of course not” I summoned a halfhearted smile, but it widened into a real grin as I took in Wanda Sue’s outfit. Middle-aged and fighting every minute of it, she wore neon blue spandex shorts, a low-cut cotton top with the neckline decorated in feathers, and cheap gold dangling earrings-also with feathers on the ends.

  The only thing missing was a headdress perched on her bouffant hairdo. Of course, I wasn’t sure that a headdress would exactly fit on hair teased that high, but if anyone could do it, it was Wanda Sue.

  She owned the Twin Palms RV Resort and had been my dear friend since I arrived on Coral Island. Warm, caring, and a fashionista dropout, she had taken me under her fleshy wing from the first day. She was also plugged into the Coral Island gossip network and knew if a car so much as backfired within a ten-mile radius. Needless to say, the latter talent helped me enormously when I was working on a particularly difficult news story.

  “So, honey, what in tarnation happened at Little Tuscany?” she asked. Wanda Sue also had a southern drawl as deep and thick as the Everglades.

  “You’ve already heard?” Okay, it was a rhetorical question, but I had to ask.

  “Oh, Mallie.” She waved a hand bejeweled with rings. “I heard from Pop Pop, who heard it from the Jordan twins, who got it from their mother at the Island Hardware store, who got it from her neighbor who was having lunch at Little Tuscany when it happened.”

  Whew. Talk about a grapevine; that one could choke an elephant.

  “Did Marco die of an allergic reaction?” she continued, leaning down to pat Kong on the head. He growled and then stomped on her foot with his little paw.

  “Sweet little pooch.”

  Undaunted, Kong raised his ears and barked again.

  “Sorry. He’s a little cranky from being inside all day,” I explained as I pulled him back.

  Wanda Sue straightened. “That little poodle is just cuter than a June bug on a hot night.”

  I kept a tight hold on Kong’s leash as he tried to nip at Wanda Sue’s ankle. He didn’t like being compared to insects, and I swear he could understand English-even with Wanda Sue’s heavy southern accent and occasional mangling of the language. While I kept a wary eye on my poodle, I filled her in on the events that had transpired at the restaurant.

  “If you ask me, Marco Santini deserved it,” Wanda Sue commented when my narrative had ended.

  I blinked in surprise. “Huh?”

  She sniffed. “That man was mean as a snake-through and through. He drove his wife, Delores-Beatrice’s mama-to a nervous breakdown just to hightail it away from him.”

  “How so?” My interest kindled.

  “Anger issues.” She pursed her lips. “But to tell you the honest truth, I think Delores faked the breakdown. Afterward, she moved into town and found herself a new man-some mystery guy-no one actually ever met him. Anyway, she was a happy camper until she got Lucas Disease.”

  I paused, trying to decipher her usage. “You mean lupus?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Poor Delores-couldn’t go in the sun for years, just like them werewolves. Eventually, she got weaker, and she died a couple of years ago. Tragic. I liked her. She was a sweet lady and deserved better than she got in life.”

  “And now Beatrice has lost both parents,” I said, almost to myself. A twinge of guilt nagged at me for all the times that I complained about my own mother. Sure, she could be controlling, but at least I had both parents in good health-with a two-thousand-mile buffer. It couldn’t get much better.

  Her brows drawn together, Wanda Sue looked out over the Gulf of Mexico; the gently rolling waves seemed to sigh at the story of the Santini family. “At least Beatrice has Guido.”

  “Her boyfriend from the restaurant?”

  “Yep.” A small puff of breeze wafted in, and she tucked an imaginary stray hair up into the massive bouffant. Nothing had actually been blown free, because Wanda Sue probably used half a can of hair spray a day to keep that helmet firmly in place. “He came here six months ago as an exchange student from Sicily and worked in the restaurant part-time-just a dear boy. He and Beatrice were an item right from the beginninglike Rodeo and Juliet. So romantic.” She let out a long, audible breath.

  “Guido sounds like a good kid,” I echoed. Obviously, Shakespeare hadn’t been on Wanda Sue’s required high school reading list.

  “He is, but Marco never liked him-what a surprise. He did everything he could to keep them apart, ‘cause he wanted Beatrice to take care of him in his old age, which wasn’t all that far away.” Wanda Sue clucked her tongue. “I told you, honey: mean as a snake.”

  “But Marco kept Guido working at Little Tuscany.” I didn’t want to tell her that I’d already heard part of this story from Sandy, because once Wanda Sue lost her train of thought, it never came back. “That’s strange.”

  “Probably so he could keep an eye on him. It wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart-trust me”

  I did. Wanda Sue might not know the names of Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, but she was a good judge of human nature. Maybe because she’d been managing the RV park for eons and had seen pretty much every kind of human behavior. I trusted her gut reaction more than the regularity of the sunrise and sunset.

  We didn’t speak for a few moments, with only the waves as a quiet background to our thoughts. The afternoon sun had intensified, and I plucked at my cotton T-shirt to cool off.

  “Enjoy the heat, hon. A cold front is coming in off the Gulf.” She pointed at the gray clouds off to the west.

  “Wanda Sue, do you think it’s a little odd that both Santini men died within two days of each other?” I finally asked.

  “What do you mean?”
>
  “Well … Carlos Santini died at home-of an apparent heart attack-and today Marco Santini died in his restaurant of an apparent allergic reaction. Doesn’t that strike you as sort of an … interesting coincidence?”

  She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. “When you hit middle age, almost anything can snuff you out. Maude Butterman, who used to live here at the Twin Palms, caught one of those retroactive viruses and, in three days-poof! Gone. Of course, she’d had a couple of mini strokes beforehand, but-you never know.” She hugged her arms across her ample chest. “She’d parked her RV for years right here on the spot next to yours.”

  I started. “You mean I’m next to a death-cootie RV site?”

  “Oh, no,” she reassured me. “The cooties are gone. I had Pop Pop clean the site after we had her RV hauled away.”

  Like that was going to help. Pop Pop probably had his own death cooties seeping out of every pore ever since he’d turned eighty. He could barely stand, much less hold a garden hose to clean off a cement pad. I made a vow to myself to throw a couple of gallon jugs of bleach over the RV site at the first chance. No death cootie could survive that.

  “You know … I thought I saw an RV parked next to me,” I said, “and it looked like an older version of my Airstream.”

  Wanda Sue waved her arm dismissively. “Oh, no, honey-that site isn’t rented till November.”

  Odd. But it had been a long day. “So you don’t think the brothers’ deaths could be related or … suspicious?”

  Wanda Sue’s heavily made-up eyes gleamed in sudden curiosity. “Was Madame Geri with you today?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What did she think?”

  “Nothing specific.” I averted my glance briefly, and then Kong scratched at my leg-that was his I’ve-desperately-got-to-pee signal. “Sorry, can’t talk now. Kong needs to find a palmetto bush.”

  Wanda Sue blocked me by stretching out both arms. “I don’t believe you. Something is up. Dish.”

  “All right.” I sighed, keeping Kong reined in next to me; he tapped one little paw in irritation. I revved up my motormouth. “This morning, Madame Geri popped into the Observer office in a panic, saying that a killer was loose on the island who could cause a problem with Jimmy and Sandy’s wedding. That was right after I started investigating Carlos Santini’s death, which seemed a little suspicious to me; after that, we went to Little Tuscany to question his brother about Carlos’ demise, and … well, you know, he died from some kind of allergy-“